Bogeymen Unmasked

Film documents meeting of Israeli and Palestinian youngsters, each side curious about the other.

"Promises" is a beautiful documentary and, in light of the
daily body count of Israeli and Palestinian victims, a heartbreaking film.

A nominee for best documentary at last year's Academy
Awards, "Promises" was filmed in and around Jerusalem between 1997 and 2000,
while the Oslo treaty hopes for peace were still flickering.

Its "stars" are seven kids, four Israelis and three
Palestinians, between the ages of 9 and 13, whose normal childhood pursuits and
problems are overlaid by the suspicions and hatred of the "other," transmitted
by parents, teachers and religious guides. The children live in West and East
Jerusalem, in a religious Jewish settlement and in a Palestinian refugee camp.
And although their homes are within a few miles of each other, none has ever
met a youngster from the other side.

As the 106-minute film introduces us to the homes, schools
and playgrounds of each of the children, it dawns on the American Jewish viewer
how little is known, not only of the lifestyle of an Arab family, but even of
the daily ritual in a strictly Orthodox home.

Co-director B.Z. Goldberg (with Justine Shapiro), a young
American raised in Jerusalem, has a rare knack of bonding with the youngsters,
and they reciprocate by unaffectedly telling their stories, often with brutal
honesty. We meet Sanabel, a lovely Arab girl, whose journalist father has been
held for two years in an Israeli prison as a security risk; Mahmoud, a blond,
blue-eyed Hamas supporter, and Faraj, who lives in the Daheishe refugee camp.

Their Israeli counterparts are Yarko and Daniel, bright and
handsome twins living in a secular home; Shlomo, a fervently Orthodox yeshiva
student, and Moishe, who grows up in a Jewish settlement surrounded by Arabs.

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Though separated by generations of hostility, some of the
kids express a natural curiosity to meet the fabled bogeymen on the other side.
With Goldberg as the intermediary, Yako and Daniel visit Faraj, and, speaking
in halting English, the boys soon find a more common language in their shared
enthusiasm for soccer and volleyball. This scene was shot in 1997 and during a
revisit two years later, the small spark of tentative friendship had all but
atrophied, more by neglect than animosity.

Looking at the situation in Israel today, the precarious
moment when the children saw each other as human beings, rather than enemies,
has passed again.

It may well take another generation to rekindle the spark,
but "Promises" is a needed reminder that there can be an alternative in the Middle
East to hatred and bloodshed.

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